Chargbliss is a renewable energy microgrid developer based in Orange County, California. The company works with commercial buildings to design and deploy microgrid systems that reduce energy costs and improve sustainability.
Chargbliss had built a sophisticated energy modeling program in Excel to calculate battery usage and potential savings for renewable energy microgrids. But Excel has inherent limitations compared to true software applications — and the company needed to scale beyond what a spreadsheet could handle.
Chargbliss had invested significant effort building a modeling program in Excel that calculated battery usage of renewable energy microgrids and the potential savings for commercial buildings. The formulas were complex, layered, and deeply interdependent.
The challenge wasn't just building software — it was replicating the exact logic of a highly complex spreadsheet with 100% accuracy. Any deviation in calculation results would undermine the tool's credibility with clients and stakeholders.
Core challenges the team had to solve:
Active Logic assembled a team of four — including an electrical engineer — to tackle the conversion. The team invested weeks upfront reviewing the complex formulas before writing a single line of application code, ensuring they fully understood the modeling logic.
Before development began, the team spent weeks dissecting the Excel model to understand every formula, dependency, and edge case. Numerous formulas were rewritten during development to translate spreadsheet logic into clean, maintainable software.
Active Logic assembled a team of four that included an electrical engineer who understood microgrid technology. This cross-functional approach ensured the software accurately modeled real-world energy systems, not just abstract calculations.
Every calculation in the application was validated against the original Excel model. The team built the software to model battery usage of renewable energy microgrids and calculate potential savings with zero tolerance for deviation.
Active Logic delivered a production application that achieved 100% accuracy matching results between the original spreadsheet and the new program. The project was completed within a ~$60K budget between February and May 2021, with a dedicated team of four including an electrical engineer.
When asked about areas for improvement, the client's response was direct: "Honestly, no. They did a great job all around."
Director of Operations Chargbliss — 4.5★ Clutch Review"I liked how dedicated their team was. Active Logic put the right team together at the outset and understood what we were doing with microgrids."
Talk to us about how Active Logic can turn your spreadsheets and models into production-grade applications — with zero loss in accuracy.
